


Physics, Hope, and the Nature of Stars

by kaeda



Category: Psyren
Genre: Character Study, Family, Gen, General, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:39:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeda/pseuds/kaeda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few days after Ageha's departure, Frederica and the others debate the implications of time travel and find the meaning of hope for a better future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Physics, Hope, and the Nature of Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Syr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syr/gifts).



There was an odd feeling in the Root after Amamiya, Ageha, and Kirisaki left to go back to the past, as though its collective population was waiting to take a breath. For several days, nobody really talked about it at all, but Frederica was getting more and more frustrated, and finally she pestered Shinonome Lan until he let her go out beyond the epsilon gate to the half-demolished building where she could look up into the hazy sky and at least pretend to see the stars.

 

To her surprise, Kyle, Marie, and Shao were already there. Marie was sitting in Grandmother's chair, and Kyle and Shao were slouched next to it, all of them looking off into the sky and the darkness of the Izu region. Hands on her hips, Frederica frowned at them. "Nobody told _me_ we were having a party here!"

 

"We aren't!" Marie turned around and placated her quickly. "We all came out here separately. When I got here, Kyle and Shao were already here."

 

"Oh." Frederica's outrage immediately lost steam and she sank down next to Kyle, leaning back against Grandmother's chair and pulling her hood more firmly up around her head. "It's been too quiet lately! I don't like it."

 

"It's always too quiet for you!" Kyle laughed.

 

"Lately it's been worse! Shut up," she muttered sullenly, looking to Marie or Shao to back up her argument. Shao stayed quiet, but Marie took the hint, reminding Frederica as to why she adored her.

 

"It has been kind of odd lately, since Ageha-san left." The familiar red of Marie's blush whenever Ageha was nearby or mentioned didn't even annoy Frederica at that moment. She, too, missed their friends from the past.

 

"If he'd lived, he would have been..." Kyle looked upward, obviously mentally counting up years. "He would have been...twenty-six?"

 

"Twenty-five, idiot," Frederica said with a roll of her eyes.

 

"And yet he was younger than me. Than all of us. Wasn't that weird, don't you think?" Kyle was being unusually thoughtful that night. "He was just a kid!"

 

Marie was blushing harder. "He was not!"

 

"Just because you _like_ him doesn't make him not a kid!" Kyle teased loudly.

 

"I do not—I mean, I didn't..._like_ him or—"

 

"Stop teasing Marie!" Frederica commanded, pointing imperiously at Kyle. "Or I'll have to punish you!"

 

"Sorry, sorry." Kyle quieted down, which was surprising in and of itself. Normally, he would have switched the subject of his teasing to Frederica, and the argument that would have escalated from it would have made Marie forget all about everyone teasing her about Ageha. Instead, Marie's face looked like a lobster and Kyle was sheepishly watching the sky again. "Do you think Ageha will be different next time he shows up?"

 

"Like older?" Marie asked. Frederica puffed her cheeks out a little in annoyance at the hopeful tone in her voice.

 

"Yeah. Maybe older. Maybe with, like, a cool scar or something." Frederica and Shao exchanged skeptical looks.

 

Shao finally decided that it was worthwhile to enter the conversation. "A scar? From what?"

 

"You want him to be _disfigured?_" Marie was horrified.

 

"No! Not _disfigured!_ Just like, what if he had a cool scar down the side of his face or something, like someone from out of an old movie?"

 

"He'd have to get _hurt_ to have the _scar!_"

 

"Yeah, but we wouldn't have seen it happen because it happened in the past!" Kyle frowned. "It made sense in my head," he muttered.

 

"He might not come here at all," Shao pointed out.

 

"Way to be a downer!" Frederica would have kicked him, but when she'd sat next to Kyle, it had unfortunately rendered Shao out of kicking range, and it would have taken far too much effort at that point to move.

 

"Well I mean, they're planning to change the future, aren't they? Anything that they do in the past could affect what happens to us right now. So how do we even know that they'll return to this time?" Shao had apparently been thinking about this. "How do we know that we'll wake up tomorrow and it will still be the same reality? Or that we went to bed last night and reality wasn't completely different, and the universe has already shifted to compensate for that?"

 

"I thought it was parallel universes," Frederica said doubtfully. "Wasn't that what Grandmother was saying? That if they changed something, our reality wouldn't be changed, but a parallel universe would split off with the effects from that change?" She didn't really understand it well, but she'd read a little physics when she'd tried to get a handle on her pyrokinesis during adolescence.

 

"That's all just theoretical though," Shao pointed out. "Nobody knows for surewhat will happen. Yesterday could have been completely different and we would never know, because reality shifted."

 

"The last _minute _could have been completely different and we would never know," Frederica shot back. "What's the point in worrying about it?"

 

"Does that mean, somewhere out there, there's a Marie and a Kyle and a Frederica and a Shao looking out at stars?" Marie asked in a quiet voice. "If there's a parallel universe, I mean."

 

"Does that mean, somewhere out there, Ageha and I are a team of crime-fighting superheroes?" As usual, Kyle was thinking about far less important things.

 

Frederica pushed her hood off so that she could glare at him better. "Don't make fun of Marie's question!"

 

"I wasn't making fun of Marie's question!" Frederica didn't believe him and swatted him. "Ow! I wasn't! I'm serious! It would be awesome!"

 

"Then somewhere, the world is still green," Marie said wistfully, continuing her train of thought without letting their childish behavior derail it. Shao had turned from looking out at Izu to stare at her, and Frederica was annoyed by the shining look in his eyes. Why did everyone love Marie so freaking much? That was _her_ job! "There are still clouds and animals and people living happily," Marie continued.

 

"And Ageha and I defeated W.I.S.E. and are an unbeatable crime-fighting duo!" Kyle broke in.

 

"_That_ is not happening in Marie's perfect universe!" Frederica told him hotly.

 

"How do you know what's in Marie's universe?" Shao asked, smirking a little.

 

"It's Marie! I know everything."

 

"I just want to see the sky." Marie trailed off, her voice shaking as though she were about to cry. Everyone went silent suddenly; Marie didn't cry anymore. She hadn't, not since the day that the world ended, and if not seeing the sky would make her start again, then Frederica was prepared to find a way to go to outer space and burn the strange entity in the atmosphere until Marie could see some damn sky.

 

"We'll see sky again someday," Kyle told her confidently. "You'll see. The world can't stay like this forever. We saw some near Mukuro Island!"

 

"And if Ageha changes the past, this might not even be our future at all," Shao pointed out. "We could wake up tomorrow in Elmore Wood." He stood and walked over to her chair, putting his hand on the arm of it and standing next to it stoically, as though he could transfer his strength to Marie just by being there. Marie didn't react, but she didn't really need his strength at all – Frederica knew that. Everyone thought Marie was weak and needed to be taken care of, but Marie was actually stronger than the rest of them combined.

 

Suddenly, an image formed, so vivid in her mind that Frederica could hardly believe it wasn't real. They hadn't been to Elmore Wood in nearly ten years; they didn't even know if it existed anymore, and it probably was unrecognizable. Yet somehow, she could see them all there, grown up and happy and protecting the world without all of the loss and the destruction. Grandmother would be there, watching over all of them like she did in the Root, and they would have defeated that creepy jerk Amagi Miroku long ago. Frederica, who cried even less often than Marie (at least in public), felt wetness in her eyes. It had been years since she'd even thought about what life could have been like, years since she had dared to hope...

 

She stood up, tossing her hood over her face. "You guys are talking about boring stuff," she said, trying to pretend her voice wasn't pitched a bit higher in register than normal. "I'm going back to the Root."

 

"Fu-chan?" Marie called after her worriedly, but Frederica had already started back towards the gate. She didn't answer to that name anyway, and Marie knew it.

 

When she reached Shinonome's trick room, Van was exiting, looking overexcited as usual. He bared his teeth at her, not noticing her tears under her hood. "You guys left me behind _again_!"

 

"Nobody did it on purpose!" she told him, thankful that her voice hadn't cracked. "The others are still over there. They're talking about boring stuff like sky and parallel universes."

 

Van suddenly lost his petulance and his healer's instincts took over. "Are you okay...?" he asked a little awkwardly.

 

"I'm fine!" Frederica was about to step into the trick room when a hand grabbed the back of her hood and tugged. Being distracted by Van had obviously allowed someone to catch up to her, and she thought mean thoughts about whoever it was as she stumbled a few steps backwards and had to catch her footing.

 

Of the three who had been with her, the one she had least expected to follow her had been Shao, but there he was, standing next to Van with a little smirk on his face. And of course, with her hood down, Frederica could no longer hide her crying.

 

"You're crying!" Van exclaimed, pointing at her accusingly. "You never cry! Why are you crying?!"

 

"Because Frederica doesn't know what it means to hope, and it scares her," Shao said, the tone of his voice implying that he was trying to sound thoughtful and deep.

 

"Shut up!" she said angrily, glaring at him. "You don't know anything about me!" She wiped quickly at her traitorous tears. "The hell does that even mean, anyway? What it means to hope? I do too know what it means to hope!" Oh damn, and there was her accent coming out. Now Shao was definitely going to know that his cryptic bullshit had gotten to her.

 

"You and I both learned very early on that the people we loved most in life cannot be trusted," Shao told her. "We both have powers that spark up at the slightest hint of emotion, so we both had to master control. We've seen the world go from bad to worse to _this_ in our short lifetimes. Ageha's visit changed everything and you know it, Frederica."

 

"Wait, does that mean that you two don't trust _us_?!" Van exclaimed loudly.

 

"I trust you to an extent, but I wouldn't be surprised if any of you betrayed us," Shao shrugged. "It's the only way to be prepared." Frederica blushed hotly, about to outright deny it, but Shao kept talking. "Frederica's the same way, she just pretends it's not true. But there's no room for hope for a better future in a pragmatic outlook like that." His expression grew less serious and the hint of a smirk was back. Of course he would think that the whole thing was funny. "But you dared to hope for a split second there, didn't you?"

 

"I dared to hope that you'd stop getting Marie upset!" Frederica growled.

 

"Marie wasn't the one who left crying."

 

"Neither did I!"

 

"Oh, it must have been raining. My mistake." Shao was outright smirking now.

 

"It wasn't raining!" Van interjected. "Frederica was just crying!" He stared at Frederica hopefully. "Are you okay? Are you hurt? Do you need healing?" The intensity of Van's gaze when he seized onto the opportunity to heal was something Frederica was not in the mood to deal with at that moment.

 

"Van! I think Marie had a cut on her finger," she told him. "I'm fine, but Marie could probably use some help."

 

"A cut?!" Van pouted. "She doesn't need me for a cut!"

 

"Has the rain stopped?" Shao asked. Frederica glared at him, but underneath the teasing, she knew he was right. Shao had always understood her, far better than any of the rest of Elmore Wood, and Frederica _had_ learned at an early age that trusting other people was naïve. Her parents had taught her that. Even after she'd learned to care again and let other people back into her heart, she'd always relied first and foremost on herself.

 

"Yes. It's not raining anymore," she said stubbornly.

 

"Good."

 

Shao turned to go back to where they had been sitting and walked a few steps away. Van bounded ahead of him, disappearing down the hallway with a shout of "Marie! Kyle!" Before Shao could join him, however, Frederica grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back.

 

"Shao!" she said imperiously. "I know you're not as fantastic as I am, so you can't really relate to me as much as you think you can—"

 

"Thanks," he said with a roll of his eyes.

 

"—But I think you might be right," she finished.

 

"Here's the thing about hope," Shao told her seriously. "If you had come to me a few weeks ago and said that you had this hope that someday, the world would be different, I would have laughed in your face."

 

"I never would have said that in the first place," Frederica denied hotly.

 

"Fine, if _Marie_ had come to me and said that," Shao amended. "But now, after Ageha-san's visit and everything we've learned about Nemesis Q and Psyren, I don't think it's really so crazy anymore."

 

Frederica blinked, noting with relief that her eyes were finally drying. "You're hopeful about what the future will bring?"

 

"Ageha-san returned to the past with extensive knowledge of the events that led to where we are today." Shao began to pace slightly. "That gives him considerable power over Amagi Miroku and W.I.S.E. and the events that they'll trigger. It's very likely that at least some of what we experienced won't come to pass anymore."

 

"But won't that just create a parallel reality?" Frederica was unhappy with that thought. "Another version of us somewhere might be happy, like Marie said, but _we_ won't be."

 

"Nobody knows _what_ will happen because that's never been done before," Shao pointed out. "Parallel universes are all theoretical. Physics hadn't reached a point where it could explain _any_ of this before the world ended. For all we know, we could wake up tomorrow morning in our bedrooms at Elmore Wood like the last ten years didn't take place."

 

Frederica rolled her eyes. "Don't talk like that. It's not going to happen."

 

"Probably not. But it wasn't going to happen at all, ever, until Ageha-san showed up and changed everything." Shao was somehow determined to get this through her head. "We now know that we can defeat the Star Commanders. Kyle said that you saw blue sky near Mukuro Island. Ageha-san is back in the past, changing things. For the first time in ten years, there's a chance that our lives could be different." He shrugged. "That's important to me, even if I don't trust hope."

 

A shiver went down Frederica's spine. Could it be that he was right? That someday, this would all be over? She had never dared before, never allowed herself to even think about it, but now Shao had made it all sound so reasonable, so sensible. The odds were still against them, but the possibility was there. A bright, shining future in place of the bleak emptiness that had dominated everyone's thoughts for so long – no wonder it was terrifying. No wonder the Root was subdued and holding its breath.

 

Frederica was nineteen years old. Maybe it was time to try something new.

 

"You might be right," she conceded with a wince. Shao nodded and smiled a little, sharing a moment of understanding with her. He, too, had given up years of distrust and betrayal to allow himself to believe in Ageha – and in themselves.

 

"Come on. Marie was worried about you," he said, giving a sly smile. "Fu-chan."

 

"Don't call me Fu-chan!" Frederica shrieked. Shao was already running down the corridor back towards the others, probably smirking all the way. She chased him, shouting threats about burning him as he slept, but everyone was used to her by now and ignored it.

 

Van was curled up by Kyle in the spot Frederica had vacated awhile back, and Shao flopped on the floor in the same spot that he'd been in originally. Frederica surveyed them all, these people who she thought of as family, and smiled to herself, flipping her hood back up. She perched on the arm of Marie's chair and looked out at the darkness of Izu.

 

Tonight, they couldn't see sky and stars, and tomorrow they probably wouldn’t be able to either. Maybe not even in a few months or years. It didn't matter. There was a new hope in the back of her mind – that maybe someday, somewhere, they would live in a place where they could go out on a clear night and see the stars – and for now, that was all Frederica needed to keep on going.

 

Later, when she fell asleep leaning on Marie's shoulder, her dreams contained flashes of a better future instead of the destruction of the past.


End file.
